SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
EP 313: He's Not an Artist But Sold $5m Worth of Art in 2015
23 Jun 2016
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is The Top, where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base.
Chapter 2: What is Vango and how does it connect artists with buyers?
You'll learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers they have. I'm now at $20,000 per top. Five and six million. He is hell-bent on global domination. We just broke our 100,000-unit soul mark. And I'm your host, Nathan Latka. Okay, Top Tribe, this week's winner of the $100 is Rick Siegmund. Rick Siegmund, brick and mortar business.
That is his focus. So congratulations, Rick. If you guys want to win $100 every Monday on the show, in order to enter, simply subscribe to the show on iTunes now and then text the word NATHAN to 33444. Again, text the word NATHAN to 33444.
Chapter 3: What inspired Ethan Appleby to start Vango?
You're listening to episode 313 of The Top. Coming up tomorrow morning, you are going to learn how this guy just sold his company, Skillbridge.com, to Top Tool. But why'd he sell it? Top Tribe, good morning. I've got my Irish mocha in hand, which is appropriate for this morning. We've got Ethan Appleby as our guest this morning.
Ethan is passionate about design thinking as a means to transform culture and organizations and countries. Using this thinking, he's worked with key businesses and political leaders on critical strategic issues. He's worked with nonprofits, education, commercial, and government entities to create tangible benefits.
Chapter 4: What was the revenue growth of Vango in its early years?
He's the founder of Vango, a new startup that connects emerging artists and novice art buyers. Apple selected Vango as one of its top apps recently. Ethan, are you ready to take us to the top? I'm ready to take you to the top, Nathan. Let's do it, man. Good morning. Tribe, how are you? You were just badgering me before the thing.
Chapter 5: How many active sellers and buyers are on Vango's platform?
You're a Wahoo, I'm a Hokie, so we're already in battle here, right? I know. It's not up to a good start, but at least we'll get our...
we'll be at our best i think exactly okay so tell me more about vango what do you sell it and how does it how do you how do you actually make money you as a business yeah sure so bingo's a marketplace uh that connects artists and potential buyers uh we make money by taking 30 of every transaction okay got it very cool yeah and tell me more and tell me more about your history so why launch this business
Yeah. I mean, so I, I grew up, my sister was an artist. And so I saw the sort of struggling artists, uh, you know, persona growing up. But for me, it was really great. I was, uh, I just moved into a new apartment. I live in San Francisco, moved from DC and I was looking at my walls and they had the same Ikea prints that my friend was helping me move into my apartment.
Chapter 6: What challenges does Vango face in acquiring new sales?
And, you know, we're just kind of laughing. Like, why is it that everyone has the same, uh, you know, generic Ikea art. And so start to like ask that question more and more and just realize that like, you know, art was something that, you know, I think people are intimidated by, but also very intrigued and think is cool and interesting.
And so given my background in design thinking, I thought this would be a really interesting thing to like figure out like how do we make art as popular as music? I love that. Okay. So let's dive into some more of the intricacies here in the business. What year did you found it in? 2013.
Chapter 7: What funding strategies has Vango employed?
Okay, and what were you doing before that? I was a design thinking consultant helping basically teach innovation into larger organizations. Okay, so you were like a consultant at a bigger company or what? I was a consultant at a smaller company working with mostly bigger companies and governments.
Design thinking is a process actually that came out of Stanford that basically systematically helps you have an approach to innovation using prototyping and interviewing people to understand what the root of the problem is. It's very much like lean startup. Yeah, I was going to say it's like lean startup for art or design. Yeah. Okay, let's dive more into this. So you founded it in 2013.
Chapter 8: How does Vango determine pricing and revenue from art sales?
I always love asking this. What was year one revenue in 2013? Do you remember? It was like zero. Okay. I mean, it took us a while to build the product up. And I mean, we spent... I guess if we measure it, we've been an artist because we spent our first 8 months building the product and getting artists on the platform. Okay, got it.
So how many... And you'd consider... In standard marketplace terminology, you consider the artists the sellers, right? Correct. Okay. So how many sellers... Let's fast forward now. So it's March 2016. How many total sellers have used the platform? $5,000. $5,000. Okay. And how do you define that? Is that they've sold at least one piece of art? They've listed at least one piece of art?
They have an active profile. I mean, so I would say we have had probably something closer to on the supply side, like 20,000 artists come on, but those are active artists who are engaged in selling. Okay. So at least 5,000 of your 20,000 have sold at least one piece of art. Is that, is that fair? Yes. Okay. 20, so it's 20,000 active. Okay. And then what about on the buy side?
This is intriguing to me. So you're targeting like kind of new kind of new art buyers. We're talking millennials, right? We're talking people who wear Warby Parker, like use Uber, you know, the money who wants something unique, wants something original. Um, but when it comes to their walls, they're just blank or, or boring. Um, and so, you know, go ahead.
I was going to say, so how many buyers have you worked with? Would you say over that same period? I mean, we've had, as far as people on our platform, about 100,000. So just to be clear, so that's 100,000 buyers in March 2016 alone or through your 2013 to March 2016? Yeah. Sorry, that's in the lifetime. Lifetime. Okay, cool. 100,000 buyers. So what were you, do you look at this?
I mean, is the revenue pretty predictable month to month or do you have to hustle every month to get new sales? It's amazing. We are still hustling. I mean, it's just, it scales and it changes in a way, but every month, you know, you continue to figure out like, okay, what are we going to do this month? to, to grow. And we went through 500 startups, which is an incubator program about a year ago.
Um, and they helped, helped us really think about how to, how to approach that and like constantly, um, you know, be iterating and, and trying different things. Um, I was just gonna say the only difference is that, right. It's kind of like in scale. And part of it's just like the number of people you have on your team.
So early on, you're doing a growth hack where you're like literally calling like all your parents and friends, you know, on Friday, just like hit your numbers. Right. And then you run out of odds and then you're like, okay, like, you know, let's do this. And so it just kind of, that's, it just changes. And I guess how big the, The growth hacks.
And as of March 2016, how many folks are on your team? We have 12. 12. Okay, total. All in San Fran or remote? Two are remote based in San Francisco. Okay. And then you've gone through 500 startups. So I imagine you probably have some funding history. How much have you raised? So we raised just under $3 million. Okay.
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